STRALSUND, Germany — President Bush and Chancellor Merkel sealed their deepening friendship yesterday, swapping kisses, accolades, and pickled herring beneath the blue skies of the Baltic coast.

The painstakingly choreographed visit of the American president to Stralsund, the German chancellor’s political home, went off peacefully after anti-war protesters were kept at bay.

At a meeting with 1,000 handpicked people, a quarter of them naval cadets, locals photographed the president with their cameras and cell phones as he put his arm around Mrs. Merkel, having greeted her with a firm kiss on the cheek.

The president, who is on his way to the G-8 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, looked very pleased with himself as he opened his address to the crowds with a hearty “Guten Morgen.”

But his attempt at German lacked the resonance of President Kennedy’s memorable 1963 “Ich bin ein Berliner” statement.

He praised the German people for voting for Mrs. Merkel, a woman with a “bold vision and a humble heart” whom he said he was “proud to call a friend.”

Speaking on relations with Iran, Mr. Bush said a diplomatic solution would be “hard work” but, turning to his German counterpart, he stressed their desire as “peace-loving” partners to work together on the issue and credited Mrs. Merkel with persuading him that America should “come to the negotiating table” at all.

Mr. Bush added, “It’s really important for Europe to speak with one common voice.”

Mrs. Merkel said she was proud to show the president her constituency, which 17 years ago was behind the Iron Curtain, and said Germany had a debt of gratitude to America for its help in the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“I am delighted to have you here to show you what it means when people try to take their own fate, their own future into their own hands,” she said.

Mr. Bush was presented with a wooden barrel of pickled “Bismarck” herring by a local fishmonger and, to much laughter, mimed slipping one of them down his throat.

The president’s attention repeatedly turned to just how much he was looking forward to eating a wild boar caught by a hunter and checked by German and American vets, which was to feed the two leaders and 50 guests at a barbecue last night. “I’m looking forward to that pig,” he said. “I understand I may have the honor of slicing the pig … but I ain’t seen [it] yet.”

[In a news conference in Stralsund, Mr. Bush said he will be “firm” in expressing concerns about freedoms in Russia to President Putin, the BBC reported. “Our job is to continue to remind Russia if she wants to continue to have good relations, she needs to share common values,” Mr Bush said. “But I’m also going to be respectful.”]